Lucy Moss | |
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 Moss at the75th Tony Awards in 2022 | |
| Born | Lucy Amelia Nancy Moss (1994-01-13)13 January 1994 (age 31) Hammersmith, London, England |
| Occupation |
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| Education | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (BA) |
| Years active | 2014–present |
| Notable works | Six Hot Gay Time Machine Why Am I So Single? |
| Notable awards | Tony Award for Best Original Score |
Lucy Amelia Nancy Moss (born 13 January 1994) is a Britishmusical theatrecomposer,lyricist, playwright, writer, and director best known for co-creating the hit musicalSix withToby Marlow.[1] As director of mostSix productions, Moss became the youngest ever female director of aBroadway musical at 26.[2][3]
For itsWest End run,Six was voted Best New Musical of the Decade by readers ofWhatsOnStage and receivedfive Olivier Award nominations.[4][5] Nominated for aTony Award for Best Direction of a Musical with Jamie Armitage,[6] Moss alongside Marlow won the Tony Award for Best Original Score in 2022.[7]
Before theatres reopened in 2021, Moss directed the virtual benefit performance ofRatatouille: The TikTok Musical.[8] In 2022, Moss directed a new production ofLegally Blonde: The Musical atRegent's Park Open Air Theatre in London.[9][10]
Moss grew up inEaling,West London.[11] Her father, Robert Moss, was a fund manager who died when Lucy was 14.[11] Her mother Julie is a tax adviser.[11][12] Lucy became interested in musical theatre and dance through her local ballet school.[11] Lucy attendedSt Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, graduating in 2011. She attendedLaine Theatre Arts for two years, during which she worked as acage dancer atCyberdog inCamden Market.[13][12]
Moss then attendedGonville and Caius College, Cambridge.[12][1] Much of her focus was on feminist and revisionist history.[14] During her first year, Moss co-directed the Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club production ofRoad at theADC Theatre,[14][15] which led to her first meeting with Toby Marlow, who was in the audience.[14] In 2015, she was an assistant director forAjax440, a student play aboutgame addiction, which Marlow appeared in.[14][16] That year, she also appeared as a dancer in a Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club production of the musicalRent, which featured Marlow and Zak Ghazi-Torbati in leading roles.[17]
Lucy Moss andToby Marlow co-createdSix while in their final year at Cambridge.[1] Marlow came up with the idea of a pop concert featuring thewives of Henry VIII and asked Moss to help write it, after being offered a slot at theEdinburgh Festival Fringe by the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society.[13] They put together the basic concepts of the show within ten nonconsecutive days, over a period of six months.[1][13] As Moss explained toVogue, “It’s not like I do the lyrics and Toby does the music. We sit in a room and work it out together.”[1] Marlow had originally envisioned more "generic" pop songs that could stand alone as singles, but Moss suggested putting more historical references into the songs.[13] In an interview withThe Stage, she said, "We realised as we wrote it that it would be funnier and more interesting like that, and that you could not tell the story without it."[13] As she later toldThe New York Times, after watching the BBC documentary seriesSix Wives withLucy Worsley, Moss realised, "'Ooh, I think this could be cool, as a feminist thing. There is a different take on the wives, and there is this historical wrong to be redressed.'”[14] Although Marlow is aHamilton "superfan" who wrote his dissertation on the musical, Moss made a decision not to listen to any of the songs fromHamilton, to avoid being influenced by it.[13] On their first day of writing, Moss and Marlow watchedBeyoncé's 2011 video album,Live at Roseland: Elements of 4, which provided inspiration on how to weave storytelling into a concert performance.[14]
In addition to co-writing the musical, Moss choreographed the premiere ofSiX – Divorced. Beheaded. Live! at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe.[1][14] Rating it a "'must see' show of outstanding quality",FringeReview said that "whoever came up with the choreography deserves a large round of applause too as it was different for each number, appropriate to the mood and the music and faultlessly executed."[18] Another review inBroadway Baby describedSiX as "a brazen, glamorous and truly unforgettable history lesson".[19] The show immediately received interest from producers.[1] Following additional performances at Cambridge, Moss and Marlow received financial backing from a team includingGeorge Stiles,Kenny Wax, and Wendy and Andy Barnes.[14]Six was "redesigned, reorchestrated and recast",[1] with Moss moving into the role of co-director with Jamie Armitage,[14] and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille as the choreographer.[1]
Lucy Moss is co-director ofSix on theWest End and on Broadway, together with Armitage.[20][21] She is also co-director of most other productions ofSix, including the UK & Ireland, North America, and Australia & New Zealand tours.[22][23] On 31 January 2020,The Stage announced that Moss had broken the record for youngest female director of a Broadway musical, at the age of 26.[3] The record had previously been held byElizabeth Swados, who was 27 when she directedRunaways in 1978.[3]
Six receivedfive nominations in the 2019 Olivier Awards, in categories includingBest New Musical andOutstanding Achievement in Music for Marlow, Moss, Tom Curran, and Joe Beighton.[5] In December 2019,Six was voted Best New Musical of the Decade by readers ofWhatsOnStage.[4] In August 2019, Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow signed a deal withWarner Chappell Music to take the songs fromSix to "even more fans worldwide".[24] By February 2020, the cast recording ofSix the Musical had reached 100 million streams on Spotify and Apple Music, making it the second most streamed musical theatre album afterHamilton the Musical.[25]
Her second collaboration with Marlow was onHot Gay Time Machine, which he created together with Zak Ghazi-Torbati.[26] Moss directed and co-wrote the show, which was sold out at Edinburgh Fringe 2017 and 2018.[27] Between 2017 and 2021, the musical comedy cabaret show has had limited runs atThe Other Palace Studio,[28]Trafalgar Studios,[27] andSoho Theatre.[29]Hot Gay Time Machine won the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence 2017.[30]
In December 2020, Lucy Moss directedRatatouille: The TikTok Musical, which was pre-filmed and streamed as a virtual performancewhile most theaters remained closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.[31][8] Premiering on New Year's Day 2021, the show raised a record $2 million forThe Actors Fund, selling 350,000 tickets.[32] According to producer Greg Nobile, he and writers Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley quickly agreed on Moss as their first choice for director.[33] The show included the entire Broadway cast ofSix, as an ensemble of "Rat Queens", and incorporated several tributes toSix.[34]
Prior to the broadcast, Moss toldThe New York Times that although thecrowdsourced origins ofRatatouille the Musical had been "on the cutting edge of tech and the mostGen-Z thing in the world", its creators still aspired for it to be as much like a "classical musical" as possible, albeit "in the least theatrical space ever – online".[8] She described her vision for the production as "a Zoom reading or an online concert that drank 20 Red Bulls and spit on the screen."[8]
On 16 March 2022, Lucy Moss was announced as director of a new production ofLegally Blonde at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London.[10] The show featured formerSix cast memberCourtney Bowman, who played Anne Boleyn on the West End, and ran from 13 May to 2 July.[35]
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